


The Flame, Unyielding

by Jazzy_Kandra



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson, SANDERSON Brandon - Works
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22302949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jazzy_Kandra/pseuds/Jazzy_Kandra
Summary: In which Vin choses to stay...without him. AU.
Relationships: Elend Venture/Vin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	The Flame, Unyielding

There is a flame inside that has yet to go out. Though dim, though faded, it peters no more. It is steady and stubborn, tired but fiery.

Thus, the flame burns, unyielding.

For what kind of fire would it be if it were to grow cold?

She knows who she is. Knows what that means. Knows the weakness will fade and the flame once more grow. And on a bed of blossoms, laid beside a man unmoving, she takes a breath. She opens her eyes.

The gathered crowd gasps and falls silent. She looks on at the boy—no, the man—now leading them. And manages to, somehow, smile, just as her father had taught her.

“Good morning,” she says, the sunlight filtered through exhaustion and tears. “I guess I’m back.”

The wind blows through green…green grass, bell-shaped flowers on fragile stems. She takes a breath in the deep gulf between her words and their questions.

“Vin?”

“Empress?”

“The Heir lives!”

“What of Elend?”

“Where is the Emperor?”

She doesn’t answer, instead, she grips a hand that cannot grip back. They had both made their choice. He, she thinks, understood the reason she chose to return better than she does herself. Why her instincts lead her to this decision.

Why had she stayed? She doesn’t know.

“They’ll need you,” he had told her, nodding first to a man who had taken the fate of the world on his arms, and then to another, a person she sees as both teacher and father. But that was not all those words had meant. She tried to deny it…but Elend had smiled…even as he faded into mist, pulled to some point away, always away from her. “And if you can’t for them, do so for me.”

She wishes he hadn’t said that. She wishes he had not asked that of her. But while she had said she had nothing else to live for if  _ he _ wasn't there…

The crew, what remains of it, ran to her side. Tears and laughter flow, intertwined together in a mixture of emotions she does not fully grasp. She is grieved that he is gone. Her heart is torn that he cannot see the yellow sun, the blue sky, the white flowers, the green things…that he cannot be with  _ her _ …but her flame has not gone out.

She will see these things for him, she decides. Live for him. Be for him. She lives on because she had loved him…and because she loves them. They are her family, too.

She just hadn’t realized that. 

***

She breathes in the mist several months later, standing on the rooftop of a two-story house that is little more than the best shack in a sea of shanties. They had built the village up quickly, named it in honor of her deceased husband. In the next few years, she hears, they hope to erect a meeting hall for parliament. Soon, the Crew says, they will have no need for an empress like her.

She isn’t all that worried about that. She looks forward to the day she can renounced the title she never really wanted to bear. It’s  _ his _ dream, after all. She will see it through, and, until it happens, she will stay and watch over this city…

But other things keep her here too, she thinks. Bind her still, Connect her to this new world and its Joy's, its sorrows.

Another lands on the rooftop on the corner of his ankle …then topples onto his rump. She sighs then tiptoes to him with the grace of one born of the mists. A smile slips onto her face, the mists dance around them, pulled here and there by the power of their Allomancy. Once, she had thought, she would never smile again. Once, she had thought, she could never laugh heartily, never be happy without Elend by her side.

But the flame has not gone out. It has been only four months...but also four months, already. The bitter and the sweet, life has a layer of sadness without him, but a layer of joy because he was in it. She breaths, tsks at the Mistborn at her feet.

The newcomer lets out a nervous laugh. “I was going to tell you to head back inside.”

She rolls her eyes at these words, offers him a hand, and she pulls him to his feet. Awkward, even after  _ months  _ of training with her, Spook has taken to the mists like a dog takes to climbing trees, both images are amusingly unnatural. Looking up, she burns tin, and, in the velvet sky, a few stars wink awake high above them.

“It’s a nice night,” she remarks, spinning a coin on lines of steel and iron between her hands. A skill her teacher had told her was impossible years and years ago. “The mist is nearly as thick as it was in the old days.”

“Vin!”

“What?”

“You can’t be doing these things, you’re four months pregnant.”

She gives him a flat look. “So?”

“It…it just can’t be good for them.”

“Them?”

He shrugs in reply.

“ _ Them _ ,” she repeats the word, something heating within her chest. Something that brings forth both rage and sorrow and even a few flares of fear. She has barely accepted it was one, now... “How in hell do you know it’s a  _ them _ ?”

He looks down at his feet. “It’s…it’s just a guess! You’re bigger than I would expect and…please…don’t kill me.” That last part makes the Lord Mistborn sound small despite that he towers over her and most everyone, really. He shuffles his feet, uncertain, nervous.

She folds her arms. “That’s rude.” She turns around, flips the coin she was spinning onto the rooftop, then something stops her. A stray thought carried by whirls and wisps of mist, she douses her steel, her anger cools as well.

Them. That word burns inside her like a new metal she has never known but wants to understand. She feels the lump of her belly with tin-enhanced hands. Her heart beats harder, anxious and excited, perhaps if she flares tin she can hear theirs too…She turns back to look at him.

“Who told you?”

“Kell.”

She says nothing. She hasn’t spoken to him since finding out he is still…about. Yet, she feels an ounce of shame for that, but doing so would mean putting back in her earring. It would mean the risk, even so slight, of another being taking control of her, influencing her. That was why she had not spoken with Sazed, either.

At least that’s what she likes to tell herself.

Yes, it is ridiculous, she admits. But all of her family had almost died because of what she had done, what she hadn't realized. Sazed and Kelsier could just write her letters.

Or something. Whatever it was that gods and spirits do. TenSoon, after all, made an excellent messenger.

“He saw two small flames inside you. Honest. He didn’t mean to pry. It’s just…”

“Thank him for me, Spook.”

The Lord Mistborn rubbed the back of his head, then, did the bravest thing he had that night: 

“Maybe you should.”

That  _ did _ make her leap into the misty night, leaving Spook stunned and standing on a soon distant rooftop. She  _ wasn’t _ fleeing her problems, her issues. She was Vin fucking Venture savior of the fucking world.

She is pregnant with two children she would have to raise on her own, not just one. That thought leaves her feeling lost and unsure, nothing more than a wisp of mist herself. She wanders through the mist, uncertain where her steel will leave her. She wishes she could fade, become one with them again, follow him into that strange place Beyond.

She misses him more than ever right now.

Her tears mix with rain and mist in the woods outside Elendel, her back against a tree, her knees drawn up to her stomach. She hugs herself, feeling so small, so alone, wishing he had not asked her to stay behind, to live without him. To  _ love _ them without him.

Wishes are the closest things to prayers she has ever spoken. Worn out, she closes her eyes, lulled to sleep by her own words, tears, and the quiet rain on green leaves and brown bark.

***

The next day she wakes in her own bed, a blanket of fur across her legs, a dog’s head rests against her belly. Without thinking, she reaches down and pats its crown.

“Mistress, I fear I must remind you once again,” says the kandra, opening one eye. “I am not a dog. I do not enjoy pats.”

She snorts at that, grateful for the sense of  _ normalcy _ his words bring. She grasps for them desperately, needfully. His presence here…it reminds her she is not actually alone. The others are here. They care for her. She has a family, still, even without Elend.

“You brought me back?”

“Marsh did.”

“And promptly left?”

“Indeed.”

Yes, that was just like her uncle. She pauses at that thought…uncle.

_ Well, he is Kell's brother. It makes a sort of sense. _

“Is it true, TenSoon?”

He lifts his head. “I do not know of what you speak.”

“That Elend and me…” she swallows. Breaths. The heat of unshred sorrow stings her eyes and throat, she pushes it back down for now. “It’s twins.”

“Ah…” He bows his head.

“Is burning metals dangerous for them?” she asks, knowing full-well what vague response means. She knows Spook had not lied, but…it feels right to ask. To know for certain. To hear it from Sazed, too, or at least from his messenger. Secretly, she had wanted Kelsier to be wrong. She’s not ready for this burden, she thinks. But is anyone really ready? She just...hopes she is a better mother than her own had been. “Could they be harmed by that?”

“Lady Vin.”

“You don’t have to call me that.”

He gives her a wry, doggy smile. He does these things for his own amusement, knowing it bothers her still. Why does she surround herself with friends like these?

Because she loves them for not leaving her by herself…even when she feels most alone. Even when she wishes they would let her be and feel abandoned.

“Do you believe it wise to risk their lives while bounding through the mist? You are not invisible, and they are far less so. I think it should not matter to you that burning metals might harm them. Your children are vulnerable beings…and if I might be so bold...”

“Go ahead,” she says dryly, knowing she cannot stop him or any of her other friends from speaking ‘so boldly’ to her. “Why even bother asking?”

He doesn’t respond to her quip.

“They are of him also, you must realize, children born of both of you. I do not think you want to lose them, too,” TenSoon says, eyes keen, wise, and knowing. He has always been one of those that knows her better than she does herself. “Do you?”

She shakes her head, biting her lip to hold back a sob.

“The mists will wait for you.”

“Thank you.” Again, she pats him between the ears, rubs him like she might an actual dog. This time, he snaps his jaws at her. “Sorry.”

He lifts himself up from the bed, trotting to the door. “I will ask MeLaan if she can fetch—“

“I can make my own.”

Vin is out the door before he can say ‘breakfast’ or ‘lunch’ or even just ‘tea’, perhaps to visit Breeze and Allrianne. They always had more than enough to eat on their table. That  _ kandra _ could not cook anything.

***

Months past. She spots her first giraffe in the meantime, shocked that anything with such a long neck can actually survive in the wilderness. Wouldn’t it break too easily? How could it live without succumbing to predators? Then again, she was not in any shape to defend herself, either.

Seven...maybe eight months along, now, and she just wants these kids to get the hell out of her. Today. Not another two months. Not another week, even. She’s tired, and anxious, and worried that someone might try to kill her...or harm them while she is in this bulky state. It’s irrational. She can no longer manage her graceful tread, much less wield a knife or dodge a punch. What was she to do if she is attacked in this state? Flop on her assailants and stick them until Ham or Spook could aid her? She needed to defend them, to defend one of the few links she had to Elend still in this world...

Sure, the others thought her fear of attackers irrational, no one in their right mind would attack the Empress, but she is still Vin. Irrationality is to her like secrecy is to Kelsier. Pregnancy was proving that it just made her more anxious, more paranoid. More afraid that…

A knock sounds at her door. It's too late for guests. Assassins, her mind relies.

Assassins don't knock, she argues back.

Maybe it's a new strategy.

_ Maybe  _ I shouldn't argue with myself.

But she is irrational.

She sighs, picks herself up from her seat in front of the fire, reaches for her dagger and a hidden vial of metals she keeps hidden behind a fake back in the third drawer inside the wine cabinet. One always has to be prepared even when you promise you won't burn metals or dance in the mists. Emergencies arise, thus she swallows the eight base metals just in case it really  _ is _ assassins.

But if it is, what was she going to do, squish them?

Really?

The knock comes again, she grumbles, stumbles to the door and opens it. What she finds in the dark portal beyond isn't assassins.

It's worse.

Spook drenched in rain water, a man leaning... probably unconscious...with a head of all too familiar blond hair curling slightly despite the damp. It obscures his face, but she doesn't need to see it. Her gaze shifts from him to Spook, then to the dark figure looming behind them, then back to the man using Spook for support.

"Why in hell are  _ you  _ here?"

He lifts his head at the sound of her voice, tries to speak, but the sight of his face makes her react without thinking. She slaps him.

"A spike what have you done, father?" her voice is a whisper, a hiss. They all hear it. All three flinch. "Why? Why are you using Hemalurgy?"

Her anger flares, a white hit metal burning within her. She wants to slam the door shut...but she finds she can't. She needs to know...and despite what they had done...

These men are part of her family. You didn't leave family out in the mist and rain. She wasn't her brother, she doesn’t abandon people. After all, she had promised Elend that she would look out for them... especially him and Sazed. No matter what either did, they were her responsibility.

And she hadn't spoken with Kelsier in nearly eight months. She has done a horrible job, the guilt twists her stomach and leaves her feeling ill, like she had at the beginning of this bloody long pregnancy. She had broken her word to Elend. She had let another feel abandoned like herself.

"Can we come in?" It's Kelsier who asks, his voice sounds faint, even when burning tin.

Vin nods, steps aside. Her eyes follow them as they enter and array themselves on her chairs at her table in her house. It reminds her of scenes in the world that once had been, when she was still barely more than a nervous and scared street urchin. Now...she is so much more, but still Vin. That name just means something else now. "I want an explanation."

"Tomorrow."

"Tonight."

His single hazel eyes stares at her, she glares at it. Finds herself unable to look at the other.

"Tonight is fine," he relents, exhausted. She recalls that exhaustion. Had felt it at first when Sazed had revived her. The Kelsier in her memories would have never relent so easily, even tired like he was now. This...he is a changed man from back then.

They all are.

It is Spook that speaks, however, once warmed wine and cider are served. “It’s...a long story.”

“Do I look like I can go anywhere?”

“No.” She glares at Spook. He raises his hands, flustered. “I mean...not to be so, blunt…By the forbidden gods, pregnant women are scary.”

She smirks. “You have a wife with child, Spook.”

“She isn’t nearly as scary.”

“So, it’s just me, then?”

He blinks, then nods, then takes an audible gulp of his cider. “Ah, hell...”

Marsh clears his throat. “Vin, Spook,” he begins, glancing at one than the other. Suddenly, their earlier argument makes her feel both silly and childish. Sheepishly, Spook rubs the back of his head. Marsh sighs. “I doubt you desire all the details.”

“Did you murder anyone?”

The three exchange a glance.

“No.”

She takes a sip of her wine.

“Unless a mistwraith counts,” Spook said. Marsh grimaces. Kelsier shrugs. “It’s not a kandra yet, so it’s not a person, right?”

“I’m no philosopher.” No, that was Elend’s specialty. Elend, she admits, would have given the opinion of several instead of deciding on one for himself. Not even her late husband would be of help in this situation. She smiles a little internally, shrugs at them.

“The spikes came from Inquisitors,” Spook explains, then pushes his dark hair away from his ears. “Like this.”

“And that makes it alright.” Her stomach twists into a knot...or a further knot, actually. “They should’ve stayed there! Buried! Don’t you think--”

“Don’t put such blame on the kid, Vin,” Kelsier says, his one hazel eye flies open. “I pushed him to it.”

Of course he had. She grips the edge of her chair. It’s a better choice, she figures, than Pushing a handfull of coins into his chest.

“Those who died making those spikes can’t come back,” Kelsier continues. “If we let the powers entropy, we’re saying that their lives have no worth.”

“You  _ think _ I believe you’re so bloody selfless?” she says, knowing her words driven by anger more than anything else. “To give worth to whoever...was killed to make that spike.”

“Is anyone really selfless?”

She bows her head, knowing full-well what he means. Perhaps had she just put her earring in once more, none of this would have ever happened. Perhaps she could’ve convinced him to stay in the Cognitive Realm. Perhaps...

“Elend is,” Vin whispers, raising her gaze to meet his. “Was.”

To her surprise, Kelsier gives the briefest of nods. “We used that spike, donated from Marsh, a mistwraith, and my skeleton to return me to the Physical Realm.”

How had he gotten ahold of that? Hadn’t TenSoon...maybe it was better if she didn’t ask. If TenSoon was involved with this scheme, it might very well mean that Sazed was too. At the very least, Harmony had to know, and thus hadn’t exactly forbade it. Knowing her father, he had likely cut a deal with his old friend.

One that Sazed couldn’t refuse.

“And?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“What do you plan to do now?” she asks. “The church won’t like it that you look like half an Inquisitor.”

Spook snickers at that.

“For now? Get used to being alive again,” he answers, sounding wistful. “Then...well, I made a deal.”

“With Sazed.”

He nods but gives no details. Just like him to hold onto new secrets. “How long?”

“Soon, but not for awhile yet,” he replies. “I can barely stumble...”

“And not without help.”

He glares at Spook.

“What?” says the youngest Mistborn, folding his arms and glaring back. “It’s the truth.”

“...and I...suppose I’d like to meet them, too,” then he paused, oddly shy for a man like Kelsier. “If you’d let me.”

She takes his hand, and places it on her belly. “You’ll have to wait like the rest of us,” she says. “But I’m sure they would like to meet their grandfather.”

For the first time that evening, Kelsier smiles. She finds, despite the disagreeable circumstances, she is glad to have him back again.

Her father, and her friend, she muses. She has missed him. Later that same day, she returns her earring back in her ear and speaks with Sazed once more. He congratulates her, happy to hear from her again.

And her flame, for the first time since he died, burns full.

***

It's only a few weeks, and the babies are born. Madra, Ham's wife, moves into her spare room, helps her care for them at night. The others are there more often than not, and Kelsier most of all. And life...moved on quickly. Too quickly.

The Survivor of Hathsin and Death quickly becomes the Survivor of Urine, Vomit, and Diarrhea. He doesn't seem to mind.

In fact, to her surprise, he's  _ good _ with her children. When she lands outside on her roof one night and hobbled through the window, tailed by tassels of mist and cloth, she spots frost on the window and pries it open it with cold, stiff fingers, then slips inside, the low hum of Kelsier's voice pauses as soon as she enters.

"You're early," he remarks, lounging in front of the fire on a plump armchair, one hand holds a book, the other her daughter. Art, assembly, is in bed. He looks amazingly like her husband despite being only seven months old. "I thought you were excited to get back out there."

She ignores the hint of jealousy in his voice. He's been back  _ eight  _ and he still can't hobble around much without a cane, though it's getting better. Having one spike and one was far more disorienting than he had expected.

"I got out there, and I just couldn't stop thinking about them." She takes Arlende from him, kisses her forehead and holds her close. The babe barely responds, not even a coo or babble, just a shift against her mother's chest. She smiles anyway, glad to hold her child safe and warm in her arms. "It's like…"

"You can't trust them with your old man."

She blinks, then snorts. "No."

A knowing smirk slips onto his face. "Neither spoke their first word while you were out, Vin," he says, closing his book and placing it on his now empty lap. It's another book by that Khrissalla person, something way to complex to read to a child...and he was doing it anyway. "Nor did either wake after I changed Lende."

"Lende…"

She runs a hand through her dark curls. Curls inherited by a father she would never know, never meet. Just like this new nickname that reminded her of him. It isn't fair. She thinks that all the time, but she cannot change it, and there is no one to kill to make it right. All she can do is hold on for the three of them.

But in moments like this. Moments when one word reminds her of all she's lost…

A warm, strong hand grips her shoulder. She looks up, looks at her father. Even though he does not grasp, completely, the emotions of others, there is sympathy in his eyes, understanding.

After all, he had lost the love of his life too.

"Not that one, then."

She shakes her head. "No, Lende's fine," she replies, then gives her daughter a wet smile. "She should have a piece of him too."

***

A few cold flakes of snow stick to the ground when, one morning, Art, smiling at her and reaching out one tubby arm calls her mama. Lende, not wanting to be outdone, repeats the word and even growls at her brother. Such scenes, such competitiveness quickly comes to mark their childhood.

Lende learns to walk first, leaving Art pissy for a week before he takes his first unaided stumbles. A tussle over the last piece of pie at five (of all things) causes both to snap and burn Pewter, and it takes both her and Spook to calm the twins down and to make sure her new Allomancers don't end up killing each other.

"We're not testing them until their older," she said once the two had finally gone to bed that night.

She's exhausted, bone-weary and wishes Elend  _ had _ to experience this hell with her. Raising twins alone is hard, he should've had to suffer too. Plus, as always, when she thinks of him. She misses him.

Even after so many years.

To which Kelsier shrugs and leans against the still open window, having just returned from an excursion in the mist. "I didn't suggest that."

"You don't have to, Kell," Spook remarked, looking as tired as Vin feels.

"I don't want my grandchildren to get hurt," he says, snapping his teeth at the younger man and all but growling. "If I had my way, we'd wait until they're twenty, but…"

He sighs. She gives him a nod. "They'll try as soon as they can get another metal."

It's not two weeks and she finds she has two mistborn on her hands. It's not the first time she's cursed Elend since he died, but it is the first time she's called him a fucking idiot since he read that book at their last ball. She's too mad at him to cry over it, and she even laughs, of course two mistborn would produce two more.

As Kelsier tells her later, she should have expected this.

Hell, she hates that he's right.

It is at age twelve that their grandfather announces he is leaving Elendel. Their first taste of real grief, she thinks, as they meet him and his small, new crew at the hot water spring below the meadow of Marewills flowers where Elend lies buried alone. The kandra homeland is usually all but empty these days, but the rustle of people, horses, and supplies fill the caverns with new life and noise, at least temporarily.

"Where's the boat?" Art asks.

"Boat?" Lende repeats the word, raising an eyebrow at her twin. "Why would they have a boat?"

"It's an expedition," he replies. "If you read more books, you would know these types of things always have boats." Her son nods 'sagely' upon announcing this apparently well-known factoid.

Lende sticks out her tongue. "They're boring."

"You're boring."

Before the conversation can bloom into a full-on argument, Kelsier greets them, Demoux and his wife at his side. He gives the twins a smile, then wraps them in a firm embrace before Lende, weeping, asks if he really must leave them.

"I'm sorry, young one." And she's knows he is, but anger flares in her chest, still. "I made a promise, long ago, that I would de--"

She crosses her arms, steps forward, she has always been a creature of impulse.

"We're coming with you," she says.

She hadn't expected those words to come out, but she feels it is the right thing to do. Knows it is, actually. Elend had told her to watch over him and Sazed.

And that's just what Vin Venture would do.

"What," he begins, but before he can finish, Demoux nods. Then upon Kelsier's glare, shrugs sheepishly and gestures at his wife.

"I made sure they packed some of your things," his wife says, a hand lifted to her chin. When the woman lowers it, she can hear the telltale sign of  _ bracelets _ sliding down her wrist, despite that the woman wore plain clothing and no other jewelry marking her heritage. Did that mean...but weren't they all supposedly  _ dead _ ? "Unlike  _ some _ , I did not think for a moment you would stay behind once you heard word of this excursion."

"Thank you."

The woman nods.

"A family should stay together," she says, then gathers her children to her. "We are not leaving you."

_ And you are not leaving me,  _ she thinks.  _ Elend did not ask me to stay just to give up on my family. _

"Yeah," the twins echo in agreement.

Despite himself, he smiles, a few unshred tears sparkle in his eyes.

_ They need me, here, now, still. _

She understands now what Elend meant. What he, perhaps, even foresaw when she charged his Allomancy and he burned atium. Vin, here, broken in heart, but never abandoning those she loved. For she, more than any other, knew what it was like to feel discarded and alone.

Thus the flame burns, unyielding.

**Author's Note:**

> A) (Kelsier's return): There is recent wob detailing how a Cognitive Shadow can, in fact, be stapled to a mistwraith with just one spike. This does not mean Kelsier doesn't have more or get more.
> 
> B) The book by Khriss is "An Introduction to Realmatic Theory". He has to learn it from somewhere, and despite what he thinks, Kelsier is a perfectly fine scholar, lol.
> 
> C) Demoux's wife is a terriswoman, and I believe the nurse that comes up in WB...which makes her a Full Ferchemist. They haven't been around much since the wedding, but Vin is still confused because she's heard all the Full Ferchemists are dead...but eh, worldhoppers. I believe these two were always involved initially with Kelsier's trip down south, and that he had a crew with him (the Southerners say that he had followers that were not of the Five Nations, so...) There are reasons for all this, I believe her, or a terrisperson like this (a Ferchemist who was off-world during the Ferchemist genocide) in constructing the Bands. No, Kelsier was not (at least at first) a Full Ferchemist and Mistborn, he was playing a very complex ploy on EVERYONE, lol. There is more to this theory, but that's beside the point.


End file.
